HOW TO PREPARE FOR A DEPLOYMENT TO IRAQ / AFGHANISTAN / MIDDLE EAST
Things to do for a smooth transition, once you find out you're deploying
1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.
2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.
3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open
the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble, "Sorry, wrong
cot."
4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle
of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep Four
inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee
everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave 2 to 3 sheets of toilet paper. Or
for best effect, remove it altogether.
5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and
dump dirt on your head.
7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for
that tactical generator smell.
8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your
family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper
noise level.
10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the
wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him
when he curses you.
12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in
the other side of your bathtub.
13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich on a saltine cracker.
14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your
food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an
unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.
15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it
goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate
there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the
garden hose.
16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and then put
them back together again.
17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours
before drinking.
18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their
strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange
clothes with them.
19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and
lie under it to read books.
20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back
doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the
sill every time you pass through one of them.
21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the
bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.
22. Go to the bathroom when you just have gas, "just in case." Every time.
23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as
you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry
it's for the other Smith."
24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean
clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage
where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or
removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family
gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like.
Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed,
wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant
lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.
27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale
call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.
28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.
29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and
fragmentation.
30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and
culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before
proceeding.
31. Fire off 50 Cherry Bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00
AM. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just
Registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute
for their shattered windows.
32. Drink milk and sodas at ambient temperature
33. When people put their hand on your shoulder and say, "Welcome back from
(Bosnia Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). Was it bad over there?" Reply by pointing
at them and yelling, "Bad touch! Bad touch!"
34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you
placed outside the front door before they come inside.
35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the
back yard. Explain that the 4 x 4s are not 8 inches on center and make them
rebuild it.
36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.
37. When your 5-year old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact
stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type
up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to
your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.
38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot
it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.
39. Play horseshoes when you are not working.
40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself
to repeat this process for another 6 months to simulate the next deployment
you've just been ordered to support.
Support Our Troops!